Tips for those suffering with cloud shadow performance

[Glynn 405]

@mad dog, it might be interesting to share your prepar3d.cfg file. There must be another setting used in combination (in addition to cloud shadows), that brings our machines to their knees (I don't know, AA setting? tesselation?).

 

 

I have not really started to investigate the cfg file yet, those shots were done with Affinity mask set at 14 but 15 or even none seems to be fine, I used 14 as I had other stuff running along side the sim and wanted to leave a bit of room on core0

But I had put in the Bufferpools settings I had succesfully used in FSX with this GTX570.

Absolutly no idea if these are even relevant anymore but tossed them in regardless.

My graphics vram is almost full at aound 1200mb and the card is running close to 100% utilisation with these settings.

Cloud shadows @ 60,000m does not seem to affect anything but I have not tested at every time of day yet.

 

 

My graphics vram is almost full at aound 1200mb and the card is running close to 100% utilisation with these settings

 

[bufferPools]

UsePools=1

PoolSize=8388608

RejectThreshold=126976

 

 

There is more work to do yet to sharpen up my ground textures a but but so far I am happy with what I am seeing.

My i5 2500K@ 4.6 seems to have plenty of headroom left and my testing shows that I really need a card with more Vram

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WindshieldPrecipitationEffects=1
MinGustTime=10
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CLOUD_COVERAGE_DENSITY=7
THERMAL_VISUALS=0
VolumetricFog=1
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SITUATION=FLIGHTS\OTHER\Prepar3D
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Map_Orientation=2
MUTE_ON_LOST_FOCUS=48
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CycleSetting=0
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LENSFLARE=1
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CLOUD_SHADOW_CAST_DISTANCE=5
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SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_MID=5
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AUTOGEN_VEGETATION_DENSITY=2
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[Guest]

IMHO, artificially reducing the cloud thickness just to preserve frames is not the way to go here (we spent many- many developer hours for example to be able to produce realistic storm/hurricane depictions). There are other optimizations that can be done and we'll work with LM to test case/fine tune things moving forward.

 

Agree it's not what I would want for a "final" solution to the problem of cloud performance -- it's a possible temporary trade-off.  As I understand it from Beau there are other ways to make sure AA is not being applied to clouds in DX11, but those ways can introduce breaking changes and are somewhat involved (time consuming) so they where not introduced into the 2.2 build.  However, Beau did leave hope that "more" cloud AA changes could come in a later release.

 

 

But when in dusk/dawn it drops down to 8-9 fps (showcasing that the time of day is equally important to other things in determining the final fps count).

 

Beau posted on the LM forums they may be able to make some adjustments to dawn/dusk performance issue (with cloud shadows) but it could have some possible less desirable visual side effects.  This is the issue that has me a little puzzle, I did some Dawn/Dusk testing with the 2.2 beta and I didn't find any performance issues at all (even posted some videos at dusk) ... but in the 2.2 release the same flight (location, weather, time/day) was 50% lower fps than my 2.2 Beta.  So I am a little puzzled about the dawn/dusk issue.

 

But many thanks for your insight Kostas.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[s0cks 116]

Overall I've found cloud shadows to be a little disappointing.

1. Poor performance when overcast and/or when at dawn and dusk.
2. The further the shadows extend the more it degrades the quality of other ground shadows.
3. Sometimes, panning view makes nearby cloud shadows disappear and reappear.

Glad to see it's introduction but it still needs works.

[Guest]

I did a very nice smooth flight tonight with ASN, lots of clouds and maintained over 30 fps (typically in the 40-50 fps range).

 

My current settings: http://www.robainscough.com/Prepar3D_Settings_2.html

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

P.S. Uploading video now 

[Michael Moe 495]

I did a very nice smooth flight tonight with ASN, lots of clouds and maintained over 30 fps (typically in the 40-50 fps range).

 

My current settings: http://www.robainscough.com/Prepar3D_Settings_2.html

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

P.S. Uploading video now 

 

 

Thanks for sharing but where on the planet earth :-) ? and with Q400 ? or default Cesna?

 

Michael

[riccardo74 36]

So if I well understand is better to wait a "fix" in cloud shadows then modify cloud thickness, so ASN (or other weather engine) can depict a correct real weather. Is it correct?

 

I seriously think that neither super-highend system can run Prepar3D 2.2 with all settings maxed out and have costantly 30fps or more. We have to find a good compromise in image quality and performance.

[Guest]

I posted this video elsewhere, but will again ... lots of clouds and good performance (using ASN):

 

 

I turned down the shadow map count which did help (per Wes B's suggestion) ... current graphics settings: http://www.robainscough.com/Prepar3D_Settings_2.html

 

As Riccardo says, you'll need to experiment and come up with a compromise.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[s0cks 116]

Don't get me wrong, I can have 40,000m cast with pretty decent cloud cover and a smooth flight. But then other times it's just down right terrible, dropping the frames well below 20. It's certainly better then nothing, but at this time, if you want fairly trouble free flight it's better to disable cloud shadows or stick to flying in nice weather.

[Guest]

It's certainly better then nothing, but at this time, if you want fairly trouble free flight it's better to disable cloud shadows or stick to flying in nice weather.

 

With my current settings and at any time of day (including dawn/dusk) I've been able to sustain over 30 fps with heavy cloud cover and rain ... so I can keep my cloud shadows ON in 95% of the situations where I'm using ASN.  There will of course be extreme conditions where it might be lower, but so far I haven't encountered any such conditions (have been flying PNW/Alaska since that is more likely to encountered bad weather).

 

Cheers, Rob.